Sunday Sermon Matthew 22:1-14
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to First community Church, where we worship The Lord in Spirit and in Truth, one verse at a time.
What a beautiful week we had and what a beautiful day we are having already.
This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it.
Are you glad? We have so much to be grateful for and to rejoice over! Amen???
Prayer
Prayer
Read Matthew 22:1-14
Read Matthew 22:1-14
Review
Review
We have come to a section of Scripture that we can look at and see a gospel summary. This could be a picture of a persons life, and how God sends person after person to the lost, to the downcast, to the religious, to both the rich and the poor, to the drug addict, to the alcoholic, to the moral person. He sends his servants throughout our lives to sahre the gospel.
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Who did God send to you this past week when you were struggling, down and depressed? Did you embrace the message that the messenger gave you? Or did you quench the Spirit?
Do not quench the Spirit.
Or did God send you into someones life this past week?
I think it is important that we look at the historical context of this parable, the backdrop.
This is Wednesday of the last week of our Lord’s life and ministry.
Friday, He will be crucified.
Sunday, He will rise from the dead.
This is Wednesday.
For three yearsJesus has been preaching and teaching the Gospel of the kingdom. He has been proclaiming Himself as the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.
He has been offering Himself and His kingdom to the people of Israel, His own people, the very called people of God.
And now the three years is ended, and the people have rejected Him.
And the leaders have rejected Him and are extremely hostile to Him, and by Friday will turn Him over to the Romans for execution.
On Saturday, He had arrived in Jerusalem. He had arrived for the festivities of the Passover. He stayed in Bethany, in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus – dear friends. On Sunday, when He awoke to great the day, He found a great multitude of the pilgrims there for the Passover had come to Bethany to see Him and hear Him, and He spent Sunday with them.
On Monday, He arose, and riding the colt, a donkey, entered the city of Jerusalem, through the eastern gate, to the hosannas and hallelujahs of the people, who were hailing Him as Messiah and Savior. And believing and wanting to believe, with all their hearts, that He was the military Messiah they had hoped for, who would overthrow the Roman oppression and free them from that bondage. And so, wishing with all their hearts that He would be that kind of military Messiah, they hailed Him as such. That was Monday.
And they waited for Him to attack the Romans. Monday night, He went back to Bethany, and in the morning, He came into Jerusalem, but He didn’t attack the Romans; He went directly to the temple and attacked the Jewish religious system.
On Tuesday, He cleansed the temple. He threw out all the moneychangers and all the sellers of merchandise that had turned it from the house of prayer God intended it to be into a den of robbers. And He cleansed it. That was Tuesday.
This is Wednesday, and He’s back in the temple. Now that it’s cleansed, He has come there to teach. He has come there to preach again the Gospel of the kingdom, the good news of salvation. He has come to call men to Himself.
And as He teaches, He collects a tremendous crowd. The people are listening. And as the masses of people are gathered around in the great courtyard of the Herodian temple, Jesus is the center of attention.
And the religious leaders are tremendously threatened by this because He speaks of an internal righteousness. He speaks of a true salvation that they know nothing about in their external, self-righteous religion. And He is a threat to their system.
And so, in the process of moving about the temple and teaching, He is confronted by these religious leaders. And in verse 23 of chapter 21, they stop Him in His tracks, and they say to Him, “By what authority doest Thou these things, and who gave Thee this authority?” In other words, show us Your credentials. Show us Your rabbinic ordination papers.
Now when He came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching, and said, “By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority?”
It was after they questioned his authority and would not answer the question here in:
The baptism of John—where was it from? From heaven or from men?” And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’
That Jesus shifted the conversation and gave a trilogy of parables.
The Parable of the two sons
The Parable of the wicked vinedressers
The Parable of the wedding feast
Let us remember that a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. They can reveal or conceal spiritual truths. They are concealed to the proud, the stubborn, and self-righteous. They are revealed to the broken, to the humble, and to those who are teachable. Amen?
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” ’
Are we listening?
Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and follow me!
And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said:
So here we are at the third parable of this trilogy that Jesus taught on why being questioned about his Authority.
This is another parable of the same kind:
We can see the heart of the Lord in three parables: he was kind and loving and merciful, he was patient and longsuffering, he was persistent, he did not give up after the first refusal, he did everything he could do in each one, he wanted all to come to the wedding feast.
But we can also see divine judgement in all three.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come.
What is the Kingdom of Heaven? What is Jesus talking about?
The Kingdom of Heaven is the sphere of God’s rule.
It is the dominion where God rules, where God is sovereign, where God is king.
To simplify it even further, it is the dominion of redemption.
It is the sphere of God’s gracious salvation.
The kingdom is that place where God rules, where God’s people live and abide.
It is a spiritual kingdom. It is a community of people who are redeemed, who have come to salvation, who are under the rule and the guiding and the leading of God.
Church, some people, when they come to Scripture and see the kingdom of heaven, want to assign it to a certain period of time, BUT it is not that.
Oh, there is a present aspect to the kingdom. There is a future millennial kingdom when Christ reigns on the earth. There is an eternal element to the kingdom. There is even a past element, where God ruled in the Old Testament through His patriarchs, and His kings, and His judges, and His priests, and prophets, and so forth.
So we see in this text, that a Middle Eastern Monarch or King, arranged a marriage for His son.
I think it is important to take some time out to discuss what this arrangement might have looked like from a Jewish perspective.
But before I do so, I wanted to share 2 staggering truths I discovered:
Did you all know that the royal wedding costs an estimated $42.8 million—and most of it is for security. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's wedding will come with a staggering bill: about $42.8 million.
In the U.S., weddings cost an average of $33,900 in 2019, including all the expenses related to the engagement ring, ceremony and reception, according to the latest Real Weddings study from The Knot.
This is THE KING OF KINGS who owes a cattle on a thousand hills church, this wedding would be all means make others look small in comparison.
The King is God the Father himself
While the Son is Jesus Christ
The Bride church, in the story is His church, all of His church
A Jewish Wedding
A Jewish Wedding
The father received a dowry for his daughter whereas he had to give a dowry to the prospective father-in-law of his son when marrying him off.
Dowry- property or money given
The price paid by the father of the groom to the father of the bride was called mohar. This was often paid in cash, but sometimes in property, or acts of service
Here is Rebekah before you; take her and go, and let her be your master’s son’s wife, as the Lord has spoken.” And it came to pass, when Abraham’s servant heard their words, that he worshiped the Lord, bowing himself to the earth. Then the servant brought out jewelry of silver, jewelry of gold, and clothing, and gave them to Rebekah. He also gave precious things to her brother and to her mother.
Until late in the Middle Ages, marriage consisted of two ceremonies that were marked by celebrations at two separate times, with an interval between.
First came the betrothal [erusin]; and later, the wedding [nissuin].
At the betrothal the woman was legally married, although she still remained in her father’s house.
She could not belong to another man unless she was divorced from her betrothed.
The wedding meant only that the betrothed woman, accompanied by a colorful procession, was brought from her father’s house to the house of her groom, and the legal tie with him was consummated.
Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”
But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”
Marriage, as with any type of purchase, consisted of two acts.
First the price was paid and an agreement reached on the conditions of sale. Sometime later the purchaser took possession of the object. In marriage, the mohar was paid and a detailed agreement reached between the families of the bride and groom.
This betrothal was followed by the wedding, when the bride was brought into the home of the groom, who took actual possession of her.
So church, we see that the marriages in the Bible were arranged marriages and the Bibel is clear :
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
Today church, we might call the betrothal period the time of engagement.
During the betrothal period, the man would go build his wife a new home.
The construction of this new home would take several months, or even up to a couple years, and the bride-to-be did not know exactly when the groom-to-be would be finished. Her only option was to wait and to be prepared.
When the man finished building his home, he would gather his friends and family and begin a wedding procession from his new home through town to his bride’s house. By the time they arrived, it would be a huge parade and party. The bride would go out to meet her husband, and they would return to his new house, where there would be a big Jewish wedding, full of food and festivities.
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
So it is often taught that when Jesus says, “I go now to prepare a place for you” this is what He had in mind. He is the Groom and the church is His Bride, and He has gone off to prepare a dwelling place for us, and we do not know how long it will take or when He will come for us, but we need to be ready and wait patiently. When he returns, He will take us to be with Him, and there will be a wedding feast.
Then he said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!’ ” And he said to me, “These are the true sayings of God.”
Nearing the end of the betrothal period, invitations were sent out.
The middle eastern custom during the time of Jesus was your would send out 2 invites:
The first invite asked the guest to attend. This was like the RSVPs we send out in preparation for the wedding day.
Then the second would happening suddenly. This one announced all was ready.
Keep in mind they did not have refrigeration. So when the second time this meant that the wedding feast was ready.
Note, that they were not willing to come.
Note, that they were not willing to come.
Today, we learned had a history lesson regarding Jewish weddings, next week we will learn more. But before we go, I wanted to ask?
Are you coming to the wedding feast? Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Have you surrendered your life to HIM? Is he your Savior and Lord?
Note, the wedding invitation went out quickly.
Are you ready? Are you coming to the wedding feast with the King’s SON?
He is coming quickly:
“And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work.
Prayer
Prayer
Announcements
Announcements
Are there any announcements at this time?
Don’t forget the little black box there on the left when you exit. This is for love offerings, suggestions, prayer requests and any thing else you can think of.
Reach out to those you do not see here this next week.
Look for opportunities to be the hands and feet of Jesus. AMEN!
Benediction
Benediction
And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.
The Spirit and the Bride say COME!
Remember:
Be Thankful!
Be a Blessing!
Be like Jesus!
The Lord Bless you!
Your Mission Starts Now!